Turned queerly inwards: sin, queerness and Leo Bersani’s homo-narcissism

ABSTRACT

The doctrine of sin has been the origin of significant anti-queer sentiment emerging from Christian theology and, as such, many queer Christians have wanted to insist on a distance between queerness and sin. However, some queer theologians have found value in claiming certain imaginings of sin as a queer resource. This article examines how Leo Bersani’s account of homo-narcissism as a queer relational discipline can be used to claim accounts of sin as primarily a form of individualism and separation as encapsulated in the sinful figure of homo incurvatus in se (a person turned in upon themselves). In doing so, it argues that the claiming of sin as a queer resource not only reconfigures how we understand the relationship of queerness and sin but also how we imagine sin itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Sin
• incurvature
• Leo Bersani
• antisociality
• correspondence thesis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Cheng, Sin to Amazing Grace, 4–9.

2 Robinson-Brown, Famine of Grace, 21.

3 Stuart, A Queer Thing, 86–95.

4 Lowe, “Sin, Queer Lutheran Perspective,” 80–1.

5 Cheng, Rethinking sin and grace, 111–3.

6 Mechelke, “Kinky Doctrine of Sin”.

7 Rees, Romance of Innocent Sexuality, 233.

8 Ibid., 33.

9 Ibid., 164.

10 Ibid., 245–6.

11 Tonstad, “Everything Queer, Nothing Radical?” 129.

12 Sweasey, From Queer to Eternity, 79.

13 Cornwall, “Review, Romance of Innocent”.

14 Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 108; de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ, Common Destiny, 6–8; Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 40–3. Three purely illustrative examples from different directions of the Christian tradition.

15 Jenson, Gravity of Sin, 5.

16 Ibid., 45.

17 Ibid., 95–7.

18 Ibid., 177, 185–6.

19 Ibid., 191.

20 Bersani, Baudelaire and Freud, 10–13. The earliest developments of a putative account of homo-narcissism predate the most explicit later formulations by almost four decades.

21 Caserio et al., “Antisocial Thesis, Queer Theory”.

22 Edelman, No Future.

23 Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?”, 215.

24 Bersani, The Culture of Redemption, 4.

25 Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?”, 217.

26 Wiegman, “Sex and Negativity,” 224.

27 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 11,14.

28 Bersani, Thoughts and Things, ix.

29 Bersani, Caravaggio's Secrets, 79.

30 Tuhkanen, Bersani, Speculative Introduction, 10.

31 Bersani, Rigorously Speculating, 282.

32 Bersani, Baudelaire and Freud, 11.

33 Bersani and Dutoit, Forms of Violence, 18–21.

34 Bersani and Dutoit, Caravaggio’s Secrets, 82.

35 Bersani and Dutoit, Forms of Being, 174.

36 Caravaggio’s Secrets, 59.

37 Forms of Being, 175–7.

38 Bersani, “Broken Connections,” 415.

39 Genet, Funeral Rites

40 Bersani, Homos, 168

41 Bersani, “Broken Connections,” 415

42 Bersani, “Shame on You,” 107–8

43 Tuhkanen, The Essentialist Villain, 53.

44 The priority of the antisocial movement should be understood more as a logical priority than a temporal one. It is not necessarily that ascetic withdrawal must happen before the identification of correspondences.

45 Bersani, Marcel Proust, xiii–xiv.

46 Tuhkanen, “A Passion for Sameness,” 140–1.

47 Daniels, “Ekstasis as (Beyond?) Jouissance”.

48 Forms of Being, 177.

49 Kurnick, “Carnal Ironies,” 113. As had been noted by David Kurnick, Bersani’s assessment of barebacking seems largely oblivious of the pharmacological developments that have radically changed the manageability of HIV for many people (notwithstanding the uneven global accessibility of such treatment). It is, however, possible that HIV treatment has not eliminated the connection between unprotected gay sex and death, but rather modulated it into different forms.

50 Bersani, Shame on You, 107.

51 Brintnall, “Erotic Ruination,” 56, 66.

52 Ibid., 52.

53 Bersani and Philips, Intimacies, 82.

54 Tonstad, God and Difference, 283. Note that Tonstad directs her critique against Bersani and Brintnall together, whereas I believe Brintnall’s critique reveals a point of important difference between the two.

55 Bersani, “Rigorously Speculating”, 280.

56 Bersani and Dutoit, Caravaggio, 89.

57 Milbank, “Sacred Triads,” 465. As Milbank finds within Augustine’s account of the self.

58 Loughlin, Alien Sex, 280.

59 Bersani, Thoughts and Things, 78–9.

60 Kurnick, “Embarrassment,” 398

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jack Slater

Jack Slater is a PhD student in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Exeter. His research lies at the intersection of posthuman/more-than-human theory and queer theology, with a focus on theological anthropology. He is particularly interested in how relationships with nonhumans can be generative of new forms of sociality.