Reviews for Textualities: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction

The average rating for Textualities: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-10-05 00:00:00 Olver Capponcelli I picked up this book, admittedly, as someone who has never found arguments for the Church's embrace of (post)modern sexual projects convincing. Nevertheless, not predisposed to hostility and genuinely curious about the offerings of queer theology, I hoped for and discovered a well-rounded treasury of thought on sexuality from a perspective that was previously foreign to me. Although some of the articles in Queer Theology left me perplexed or ambivalent, others deeply impressed me, and I am glad I decided to work my way through it. The first essay, by Kathy Rudy, was for me a disheartening start. There is very little if any identifiably theological content, no references to Jesus Christ (or God in more than the vaguest terms), and a lot of personal testimony; the author, a lesbian and radical constructivist whose advocation of alternative sexualities extends to polyamory, regards herself as an exile from the church, and her essay outlines the kind of open, progressive church-community structure which would, it seems, be a condition of her return to the fold. Her vision has its attractive aspects, but its discernible roots are in personal hurt and preformulated social-justice imperatives. Gerard Loughlin's introduction states that "queer theology cannot be written except out of something like the experience Rudy describes with such clarity and wisdom." Maybe, but to me it still seemed out of place. I suspect it was selected to open the book in order to stir sympathy and interest in queer readers who may be put off from theology by similar encounters with a hostile church. The second article, by James Alison, assuaged my disappointment. No malcontented outsider, Alison is a committed gay Catholic and serious theologian who embraces the Church's historical dogma and sees in it a natural compatibility with homosexuality, despite the Vatican's current position. I am not sure I accept his arguments, and I am not after all Catholic, but they gave me something to chew on. Likewise, the third essay, by Elizabeth Stuart, a bishop of the Open Episcopal Church, raises some truly important theological considerations, albeit while leaving them rather underdeveloped. And finally, with Graham Ward, we get a direct treatment of a central issue and formidable obstacle to queer theology: sexual difference. As I understand him, Ward argues that sexual difference is a relation molded by bodily habit, rather than being a formal physiological quality. Thus, whereas traditional theology assumes that bodies carry inherent sexual meaning that may be read off of them, Ward ripostes that such meaning is in principle unknowable, belonging to a fluid system of distances and affinities. Embodiment, he concludes, is a mystery in the theological as well as in the ordinary sense. Ward accuses traditional theologians of isolating the singular body from its relations and reducing it to a superficial sexual binary. I do not understand his argument fully, but Ward's is an essay I am likely to return to. Interest-wise, the remaining pieces fell, in my estimation, somewhere between Rudy's and Ward's. In consideration of their number, I will restrict myself to a sentence summary for each. David McCarthy also grasps the nettle of the body and procreation, with a surprising rebuke to sexual constructionism, offering a third way against both the ethos of the sexual revolution and the "family values" movement. Catherine Pickstock uses Plato to jump into some weighty meditations, and her essay is another I'd like to return to. Gerard Loughlin's essay musters what ultimately appears to be a defense of homosexuality, but though he puts many interesting balls in the air, his argument is obscured by an aura of mischievous implication, and I found myself wishing for an unambiguous outline of his logic. Daniel Boyarin provides a fascinating look at sexuality in the Jewish rabbinic tradition. Virginia Burrus's "queering" of St Gregory of Nyssa, notwithstanding my skepticism about her identification of homosexual undertones, has such rich subject matter, it cannot help but hold interest; similar things could be said of Amy Hollywood's treatment of the Beguines, and John Hinkle's of St John of the Cross. Eugene Rogers pairs Thomas Aquinas with Judith Butler, pitting the former against Thomist natural law theorists. Rachel Muers tries to sort through the usefulness of Hans Urs von Balthasar's thought for queer theology. The last two sections, initially, take a more strident and adversarial tone. Jane Shaw uses Laqueur and other historians to upset conservative Anglican assumptions that complementarity is the "traditional" Christian understanding of sex difference. Linda Woodhead explores in depth the re-centering of the Church on domestic life, and the effect this has had upon female sexuality and other matters. The late Grace Jantzen discusses Foucault's failure to problematize discourses of gender and death. The late Paul Fletcher's provocative "Antimarriage" accuses the church of "micro-fascism" in its response to the unhinged eros of consumerism, suppressing any eros that threatens to subvert the status quo. Gavin D'Costa argues from Balthasar's doctrine of the Trinity that the Catholic Church's male-only ordination is outright heresy, incidentally attacking the primacy of the Father in the Godhead. Mark Jordan meditates on Jesus's incarnation into the male sex, and if his approachable essay ignores some (to me) crucial considerations, it is consistently thought-provoking. Tina Beattie explores the "queerness" of Mariology, and I found her piece intriguing enough to get me looking up her other published work. Finally, David McCarthy compares the Queen Elizabeth of Shekhar Kapur's 1998 film with the hagiography of St Rose of Lima to explore desire and saintliness. In the end, what impression does this book give me of queer theology? It certainly images a diverse movement, made up not only of "progressives" and the proudly heterodox, but of theologians and scholars who take the Christian tradition quite seriously and handle its insights and failings thoughtfully. If there is a weakness common to the approach taken as a whole, such that I could recognize, it might be the habit of labeling certain images found within orthodox Christianity as "queer" (for instance, the way the Son eludes absolute gendering), and taking them as warrant to reinterpret or subvert the sexual doctrines that have always accompanied them. Loughlin's introduction embodies this bridge between "queer" as in (transcendently or symbolically) odd and "queer" as in sexually deviant, and one's responsiveness to this will likely correspond to one's responsiveness to the theological drift of the book more generally. It is worth noting that even if one does not or cannot make the leap, there may be insights to be gained simply by highlighting the striking and ambiguous sexual symbology of the Christian tradition, which is something Queer Theology does in abundance. All these writers believe that on some level, Christian theology and queer theory can come into harmony. Some are more willing to bend to the latter than others; a few openly admit tension, as when John Hinckle points out that "queer theological writings seem with a few exceptions unaware or uncritical of queer theory's antipathy towards the most basic Christian commitments." He for one wishes to detach the good in queer theory from the secularist agenda in which it is typically embedded. Gavin D'Costa, despite his more favorable perspective, makes some careful distinctions between the work of secular queer theory (aimed at liberation) and the work of queer theology (aimed ultimately at God). This does not seem to concern many others. Elizabeth Stuart identifies the chief insight of queer theology as the following, not explicitly religious proposition: "Sexual and gender identities have to be subverted because they are constructed in the context of power and are part of a matrix of dominance and exclusion." Jane Shaw comments in her conclusion, "At the heart of the fierce debates about homosexuality in the churches today lie two key factors: Scripture and science. Can Christians re-interpret Scripture to be more tolerant of homosexuality? Why not? The church has done it before with marriage. And can Christians take into account scientific findings about homosexuality that suggest that it is natural, even genetic, and not something out of which someone can be talked or forced. Why not? The church has accepted science at face value before, when scientists made the bold and daring suggestion that woman and man were different from each other." Shaw's flippant tone is unusual for this collection and may put some readers off, but her sentences here illustrate the academic and historicist approach of many of the authors. They may be revisionist, but they believe they are revising a tradition that has often transformed, for better or worse. They implicitly claim not to reshape Christianity into their image, but to make it truer to its own essence. In the end, this highly readable collection did what I hoped it would, improve my understanding of the issues even if it did not make up my mind. Queer Theology does not present an altogether coherent response--whether as alternative, corrective, or complement--to Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant traditional doctrines. Its authors stand on a continuum of attitudes toward the Church, and differ on which lessons it ought to draw from queer theory. Instead of a synthesis, the book is content primarily to open possibilities and suggest fruitful avenues of theological exploration, hopeful that the Christian community, as it continues to struggle through questions of gender and sexuality, will finally recognize the potential of queerness as an expression of divine love.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-12-17 00:00:00 Theodore Talbot I have not yet finished this, but I was expecting something different. I was expecting it to cover the most commonly discussed GLBT-related Biblical topics such the misuse of condemning passages, the homoeroticism in David and Jonathan's relationship, and other implications of homosexuality throughout the Bible. Yet upon reading it, I was immersed in verbose, complicated analysis that came to conclusions that seemed like a stretch. Still an interesting read that made some valid points.